Throw-Together Thai Salmon

Have I mentioned that I am the Master of the Throw-Together Dinner?  I have?  Oh good.  Well, last night was one such night where the spontaneous nature of creating a meal on the fly drew out the culinary genius within.  It all started with some yellow beans...

For the past couple of Sundays I've been volunteering as a cook and baker at Gravity Hill Farm (follow the link and scroll down for photographic evidence).  Its been an absolutely amazing experience, because 1) if you know me you know that I'm obsessed with Gravity Hill and their produce, 2) it's my first time in a real kitchen cooking for people other than my family, 3) I get to work with unbelievably fresh ingredients - I hand pick the raspberries in the morning for the raspberry lemon corn muffins, and the eggs arrive direct from the hen house in a hay filled basket where they lay still warm and covered in feathers.  And on top of all that, Gravity Hill offers a lovely, warm, inviting, creative and unique community of people sharing food, ideas, experiences, and talents.  Despite having to be at the farm at 7:00 AM Sunday morning, I absolutely love every moment of my time spent there.  But I digress...

in the kitchen prepping husk cherry salsa.

Yellow beans.  Right.  That's what I was talking about.  So since I'm only volunteering at Gravity Hill, I get paid in produce - which let me tell you is a dream come true.  I come home every Sunday with a giant bag overflowing with everything from spring garlic to Sun Gold tomatoes to baby eggplant to husk cherries to summer squash.  This past Sunday, my haul of the day was a brown bag full of these beautiful yellow beans - a pale greenish-yellow, so translucent you could almost see through them, like little ghost beans.  I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with this unique ingredient, but the universe again sent me a little culinary gift.  I follow a number of blogs and their post automatically pop up on my home page.  One such blog is 101 Cookbooks, and guess what this week's blog post happens to be about?  Yellow bean salad.  I knew immediately that that was what I wanted to do with those beautiful beans.  I thought salmon would be a nice pairing with the beans, but again, wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do with it.  However, I decided to let go, open myself up, and hopefully allow myself to be influenced by the culinary muses.  And boy did that wallop me with some inspiration.  I ended up using leftover coconut milk from the bean salad dressing to make a marinade that I then poured over the salmon before I baked it - the fish absorbed most of the liquid, so the salmon was incredibly moist and full of flavor, and left a rich, thick glaze on the outside.  I have to say, it might be some of the best salmon I've ever made, and I've made some pretty damn good salmon.  Just another throw-together meal that ended in delicious, spontaneous brilliance.

Throw-Together Thai Salmon
1½ pounds wild-caught salmon
1 cup coconut milk (the canned kind)
2 tsp Thai red curry paste
2 tsp fresh grated ginger
3 cloves garlic
a big hand-full of basil leaves
½ lime, juice and zest

+ Preheat the oven at 350 degrees.
+ Place the salmon, skin side down, in a deep baking dish.  
+ Put the remaining ingredients in a food processor.  Pulse until the garlic and basil leaves are broken down.  Then pour mixture over the salmon.  
+ Bake until salmon is cooked through, about 30-40 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fillets.  Serve along side the yellow bean salad.   

Salmon Salad

I love fusion in my cooking.  Whether it be a fusion of flavors, textures, or temperatures, I always have contrasts, no, conflicts in my dishes, challenging the diner's palate.  I have a strong background in film studies, and have always been drawn to those films that challenge a viewer's previously held ideals and beliefs about what film should be.  I think I've subconsciously carried that avant garde mentality into my cooking - though I haven't quite ventured into the realm of molecular gastronomy with its foie gras ice cream and grapefruit caviar.  That being said, I almost always marry the sweet and savory in my dinner meals.  There's something so beautiful about getting salty and sugary and spicy all in one bite.

One of my family's favorite dinners - and one such dish that combines the savory and sweet - is salmon salad (don't worry, this isn't like a tuna salad, its salmon over a bed salad).  The salad portion of this meal consists of: mixed greens because I liked the varied textures and bitterness of each kind; dried and fresh fruit for the sweet and chewy; roasted tomatoes because they are my current obsession and because they themselves possess both elements of the sweet savory; red onions for some crunch and bite; and avocado for the creaminess.  The marinade for the salmon varies with our mood and what's in the house, but the salad remains with little variation.  Tonight I decided to carry that sweet-savory theme onto the salmon with a marinade of soy sauce, spicy peanut dressing, and orange marmalade.

However, like with all of the recipes I post, you can take the idea and do whatever you want with it.  Take the general idea - salmon on top of salad - and make the dish that fits your tastes.  This dish is really a blank slate.  I'm just giving you a general outline and letting you color in the lines, or outside of them for that matter.

Salmon Salad
¼ soy sauce
¼ Trader Joe's Spicy Peanut Dressing
2 tbs orange marmalade
1½ lbs wild caught salmon 
5 oz container mixed salad greens
½ red onion, chopped
1 avocado, cubed
½ fresh strawberries, sliced
¼ cup dried cranberries
½ roasted tomatoes
Brianna's Blush Wine Vinaigrette

+ Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Place the salmon in a deep baking dish, skin down.
+ In a medium bowl, whisk together soy, peanut dressing, and marmalade until combined.  Pour over salmon, making sure that the top of salmon is well covered.  Bake for about 40 minutes, or until salmon is flaky and light pink inside.
+ Toss greens, onion, avocado, berries, and roasted tomatoes in the vinaigrette.  Serve pieces of warm salmon over chilled salad, drizzling some of the caramelized marinade over the top.

Salmon Burgers & Pickled Red Onions

In case you're agoraphobic or haven't been on Facebook and seen all the weather related statuses, today was an absolutely gorgeous day.  A sun-glass-wearing, take-your-dog-to-the-park, break-out-your-sandals, driving-with-the-windows-down-and-radio-blaring, napping-on-a-blanket-in-your-backyard kind of spring day.

Peppermint and I at the park.

I picked my mom up from work, and we decided we were going to grab some takeout for dinner, but as we were driving home - the warm breeze reminded me so much of the beach I could practically taste the salt in the air - I was hit with the overwhelming feeling that this was the perfect night for a burger and an ice cold beer.

So, we stopped at Wegmans, grabbed some buns, salmon, and a six pack of River Horse Triple Horse Belgian-Style Ale.  I love River Horse Brewing Company because its local (run out of Lambertville, fifteen minutes from my house), it's all hand crafted, and it's wonderfully delicious and really cute boys work there.

Salmon burgers are the easiet thing in the entire world to make...besides a bowl of cereal.  They're a blank slate.  You can add whatever ingredients or flavors that you like - fresh herbs, dressings, marinades, veggies or just salt and pepper.  I made ours with a little pepper, garlic, and soy.

And hey, going to the store, buying ingredients, coming home and cooking took the same amount of time it would have taken to go to a Chinese joint, order, wait for the food, and bring it home.  No time lost in our last minute change of plans.  And we got beer.  So win-win.

Pre-Pickling.

Oh, and I've mentioned my obsession with Bobby Flay, right?  Okay, so my dad and I went through a huge Throwdown phase.  For those of you who aren't familiar with Throwdown, it's a show where Bobby finds a chef famous for one dish, challenges them with his version of that same dish, then local celebrity judges have a blind taste test and they choose the best dish.  It gets pretty intense, and the challenged chef's aren't always gracious when Bobby's dish gets voted best.  Point of this tirade is that Bobby Flay uses pickled red onions in as many dishes as he can: tacos, empanadas, potato salad, hot dogs, burgers, you name it.  The only thing he didn't put them on was his Coconut Cake (which is one of the best goddamn things I've ever tasted).  Anyway, I've been wanting to make them for a long time, so the other day I was bored and made them.  They ended up being super easy and ridiculously good, and I have since tried to work them into every dinner - fish tacos last night, salmon burgers tonight.  They're sweet and tangy, adding great flavor without overpowering.  They seem to compliment everything.  Basically, they're magic.

Post-Pickling

Bobby's Pickled Red Onions
1 cup red wine vinegar
½ cup lime juice
¼ cup water
3 tbs sugar
1 tbs salt
1 medium red onion, thinly sliced


+ In a small sauce pan, bring the vinegar, lime juice, water, sugar and salt to a boil. 
+ Remove from heat, let cool for ten minutes.
+ In medium bowl, cover the onions with the vinegar, then cover and refrigerate for at least four hours.

Note: Instead of a bowl, I used two mason jars, putting half of the onion in each and then sealing.



Salmon Burgers
1 lb wild-caught salmon, skin removed, cut into large chunks (ask your fish monger to do this for you)
4 tbs soy sauce
4 cloved garlic, roughly chopped
pepper to taste





+ Combine all ingredients in food processor and pulse until salmon is broken down, but remains chunky.
+ Form salmon into palm sized balls, and then flatten into patties.
+ Cook on grease skillet or grill for 5-7 minutes on each side, depending on size and thickness.  Or if you're cooking on a George Foreman, 6-8 minutes.  

Burger and Beer.  Beautiful.

Satuday @ the Farmer's Market

You know what I love about spring more than the warm weather or robins or crocuses or kite flying or naps in the sun or pastel colors or waking up to the sun shining through my bedroom window?  The return of farmer's markets.  I love farm markets.  I'm lucky enough to live in an area loaded with farms and markets to sell their produce.  My favorite, Gravity Hill Farm is a small organic family-owned farm, and a five minute drive from my house.  Unfortunately, Gravity Hill doesn't open and begin selling until late in the spring, as do most farms.  Thankfully for me, the Trenton Farmer's Market is open all year round.

What's great about the farmer's market in Trenton is that not only does it feature produce from local farms, but there are permanent meat and cheese vendors, a winery, a fish monger, and bakeries, not to mention fresh pasta, peanut butter, honey, herbs and spices, and the Amish.  Yes, the Amish have made it to Trenton, a fact which the market boasts proudly.  The Amish are here and they brought Whoopie Pies.

Basically, they have everything.  And its all local.  The best part is the atmosphere; the coldness of the supermarket (fluorescent lighting, tile floors, lack of interaction between shoppers other than evil stares when someone cuts someone else off with their chart) is traded for the warmth of the farmer's market.  It's always the same people.  The vendors basically haven't changed since I was born, and the same people shop there every week.  You walk through the market and you hear the regulars greeting each other, and talking about their kids and estranged family members while sitting sharing a coffee and danish or plate of fried chicken.  There's a sense of community at the market that makes the whole shopping experience so much more enjoyable.

My dad and I hit up the Trenton Farmer's Market this morning to browse and pick up dinner fixings.  Right inside the entrance is the Terhune Orchard booth.  The Princeton farm is famous for their apples and cider, and their cider donuts are beloved by the Confoy family.  Aside from baskets and baskets of apples, Terhune had a lovely selection of fresh pies, fresh flowers, and spaghetti squash.  The girl working the booth was extremely helpful, steering us toward the best apple for chunky sauce (Winesap) and her own spaghetti squash recipes.  So, we bought some apples to make applesauce and squash to roast up.

After that, we hit up the Amish for a pie and free cookies.  (I have to say, those Amish have the cutest children in the entire world.  A five year old served us our cookies and worked the register, then ordered her father around about what needed restocking.  Adorable.  I couldn't handle it.  I wanted to steal her, but I felt like that might have been frowned upon.)

To finish up our time at the market, we walked outside and across the parking lot to the fish monger.  Now, while it looks like it might be a front for various illicit activities, its an amazing place to buy your fish.  It's got a great selection that's all fresh, and the monger really knows his fish.  Not only was he willing to answer questions we had (I got a nice little lesson on crabs and their behavior during this time of year), he gave us a deal on the filet of salmon we bought.  

Overall, it was a terribly successful Saturday outing, which led to a wonderfully delicious, fresh, and locally grown dinner.  While I love the Trenton Farmer's market, I can't wait till later this year, because for me, nothing beats a spring morning spent outdoors at the farmer's market.  

Spaghetti squash, Salmon, Homemade Apple Sauce

Citrus Soy Glazed Salmon

I love fish.  All seafood to be exact.  Last year when I went through a "hardcore vegan" phase, I still ate fish (hence the quotation marks.)  Tuna, squid, anchovies, crab, mussels, shrimp, scallops, lobsters, I love it all.  Salmon is my all-time favorite though  Baked, grilled, seared, raw: I'll eat it any way you give it to me.

At home, I follow a pretty regimented method for cooking my fish.  Preheat the oven, place the fish in a baking dish, drizzle it with a little olive oil, dash of salt and pepper, and then pop it in the oven until its pink and flaky.  Its seriously that easy.  I think people have this preconceived notion that cooking fish is hard, but just follow my four step process (dish, season, bake, and serve) and you'll be a master pesca-chef. 

Every time I cook it though, I deviate from this base by adding whatever happens to be in the house at the time.  Sometime I add a different seasoning (curry powder, red pepper flakes, paprika), or spread some jam or preserves on top of the fish (I highly recommend Trader Joe's Fig Butter), or I create my own marinade.  

Tonight was one such night.  I just bought a bunch of lemons and a new bottle of soy, so viola!  Citrus Soy Glaze!

Very Important Note That You Need To Read Before Proceeding To Recipe:

Note the delicious color of this farm-raised salmon.

Always Wild-Caught fish.  ALWAYS.  You know how grass-fed beef is healthier and tastier than corn-fed beef?  Same goes for fish.  Fish farms are no different from the meat industry's factory farms.  Farm-raised fish are industrially produced and manufactured; they feed the stock corn to fatten them up quickly, they don't have the room to move and exercise meaning they're fatty and lack flavor, and they add anti-biotics to the feed.  These fish are exposed to more chemicals on farms and are lacking in the nutrients that they get from living in, you know, their natural habitat.   Take salmon for example, there's a huge difference in color: farm-raised is almost grey, while wild-caught is a dark, beautiful, well, salmon color (farms will sometimes add dyes to the feed in order to make the fish's meat pinker).  I'm going to stop this rant now, but don't ever have me catch you at the fish counter at the supermarket buying farm-raised fish.  And if they don't have wild-caught at the counter, check the frozen section.  All fish is frozen, its just that the fish at the counter has already been defrosted, so there's really no difference.  I always try to have some fish in the freezer for days when I can't get the the store, or just feel like making fish tacos.  Okay, rant officially over.

Oh, one last thing.  This recipe serves four fish-loving adults (aka my family).

Citrus Soy Glazed Salmon

1½ lbs wild-caught salmon (just in case you forgot)
2 tbs honey

¼ cup orange juice
juice and zest from ½ lemon

1 tbs soy

3 cloves garlic, minced

pepper to taste

+ Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

+ Mix honey, orange juice, lemon juice and zest, soy, garlic and pepper in a medium bowl.
+ Place the salmon in a baking dish.  Cover with marinade.
+ Bake for 30-40 minutes, depending on the thickness.  Baste with marinade throughout cooking to prevent from drying out.